


Sunlight, Cut Off

by fraternite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Canon Era, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 08:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8242841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/pseuds/fraternite
Summary: The world of the Parisian vampires is not how it sounded in Jehan's stories.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a birthday present for the lovely paladinical, but I don't know their ao3 username. But thank you, my dear friend, for all the sunshine you bring into the world!

At first, the only thought in Courfeyrac's mind was that there was molten lead running through his veins and _oh god how it hurt_.

Eventually, the burning faded and he could open his eyes. It was night, but a thin beam of moonlight streamed through a gap in the shutters, illuminating a dark stain on the floor. It was too dark to be wine.

Courfeyrac tried to recall what had happened, wincing as his head throbbed with the effort of thinking. He remembered teeth, a snarl. A quick movement from the shadows. An animal?

Careful to move only his eyes, he looked around the room, hoping for a clue. Fortunately, as his eyes adjusted to the moonlight, he could make out many of the details of the room: The gouged and flaking plaster walls, the rubbish scattered across the floor, the broken chair in one corner. Something with many small legs skittered across his ankle. This wasn't his apartment, unless a troop of gamins had taken it over while he lay unconscious. And removed all the furniture. And the wall between the sitting room and bedroom.

A hovel, then, one of the apartments down in the quarters of the city where he knew better than to walk alone. Or should have. But apparently didn't, because now he thought of it Courfeyrac remembered walking through a dirty, crowded street, the afternoon sun warm on his black coat. A pale little girl as thin as a shadow staring down at her bare, dirty feet. Her voice whispers in his ears: _M'sieur, are you a doctor? My papa won't wake up, m'sieur, please can you come see him?_

And there was a dim hallway, a door with a number scratched into the paint. A room so dark he thought it was empty and turned around to question the child only to see her backing away, trembling. A shape in the dimness, rising out of a corner, moving toward him with inhuman speed. Teeth flashing in the dark.

His eyes widened in horror and, forgetting to be afraid of the pain, he reached for his neck. His blindly groping fingers found the two small wounds just below his ear.

Courfeyrac groaned and closed his eyes again.

* * *

He was halfway to Enjolras's apartment, sneaking through the shadows under the eaves of buildings, afraid to be seen, when he came to his senses. It wasn't Enjolras he needed. Enjolras would embrace him, would promise to protect and defend him, would assure him that this did not change his love or esteem for Courfeyrac--all of these good, all of them things Courfeyrac would need soon, but not the first thing he needed. Enjolras could not give him answers.

Nor could Combeferre, despite his encyclopedaeic knowledge of everything under the sun. Courfeyrac no longer belonged under the sun. No, it was Jehan--lover of the night, of all the creatures nobody believed in, reciter of stories sketched in blood and moonlight--who Courfeyrac needed.

But when he knocked on Jehan's door, Bahorel opened it instead.

"Courfey--" his booming greeting was cut off and his eyes widened. "God, you look awful," he murmured. "Better come in."

Courfeyrac shifted uneasily from foot to foot as Bahorel bustled around Jehan's kitchen, seeming far too big for the cramped space but somehow managing not to knock over a single one of the several stacks of plates and glasses and saucers.

"Are you drunk, or hurt, or just in love?" Bahorel called across the apartment to him. "On second thought, never mind, the remedy is the same." He returned in a few minutes with a steaming teacup, placing it in Courfeyrac's hands and steering him into an armchair in the same fluid motion. "Now, tell me what's the matter."

"Um--" Courfeyrac faltered, shifting his hands around the porcelain. The cup felt so warm--the water must be scalding, boiling . . . but when he looked down it was just an ordinary cup of tea.  "I . . . _really_ . . . need to speak with Jehan," he stammered. "Is he--do you know where he is?"

"I don't; I'm sorry," Bahorel said. "He's gone out--one of his poetry readings in the catacombs--and I don't expect him back until nearly dawn."

That was too late--or was it? Courfeyrac didn't know which of the stories were true and which were just fairy tales. Still, he felt it would be better by far to be back in the safety of his own rooms, away from anyone else's eyes, by the time morning came. He moved to get up. "I'd better be going, then. Perhaps you could tell him I--"

Bahorel frowned. "Did you know there's blood on your shirt?"

"Oh--um, is there?"

"Right there, on the collar. You'd better get it soaking quickly; blood leaves a nasty stain. Cold water, not hot, mind you, and--" Bahorel was tugging at the fabric, trying to see the extent of the damage; Courfeyrac pulled away, but it was too late. Bahorel froze and his fingers went limp. Pulling away, Courfeyrac staggered backward toward the door, stumbling over an ottoman and sending a vase of dead flowers crashing to the floor from an end table.

"Ah," Bahorel said, and his voice was very soft.

"I have to go," Courfeyrac muttered, his vision blurring. Shards of pottery crunched under his feet as he stumbled blindly through the remains of the vase.

"Wait--don't be afraid." Bahorel caught his wrist in one large hand (hadn't he been several paces away?), and Courfeyrac let himself be detained, caught between his desire to flee and his desperate need for somebody, anybody, to tell him things were going to be all right.

With his free hand, Bahorel was fumbling at his own neck, trying to untangle his elaborate cravat. After a few moments of muttered swearing, the length of fabric fluttered loose, and Bahorel pulled down one side of his collar, baring the side of his neck.

Two ragged marks stood out starkly pale against his dark skin.

Courfeyrac caught his breath for the first time in hours. "Oh." His legs folded up underneath him in his relief and he managed to steer himself over to a shawl-draped footstool. "Oh," he said again.

"Welcome to our dark brotherhood," Bahorel murmured, his lips twitching ironically.

"You mean you really--you--"

"Why do you think I wear such idiotic cravats?" Bahorel asked. "It's certainly not for my comfort!" He rubbed his neck. "You're going to have to start dressing fashionable now too, my friend."

Courfeyrac shuddered. "Never."

Bahorel's face shifted, turning dead serious. "We'll help you with the rest of it all as well, beginning with a safe place to spend the day. You should stay here tonight at the very least; the stories about what daylight does to us are more understated than overstated, and I don't have faith in the quality of the curtains at your lodgings."

"You mean the stories are true?" Courfeyrac asked, remembering the wild legends Jehan delighted in recounting, the passages from gothic novels that Marius had haltingly read aloud as he practiced his translations.

"Most of them, yes. Night vision, quick healing, hearing like a cat's. We can't turn into bats, though--or at least no one I know can."

"How long have you--"

"About four years."

"Oh." Courfeyrac finds himself illogically disappointed, as if something he'd always believed had turned out to be false. "So you're not hundreds of years old. I thought . . . you . . . we . . . were supposed to be immortal."

Bahorel laughs humorlessly. "In theory, I suppose we are. As far as we know, we don't age, although I don't know of any brothers who've lived long enough to actually prove it true."

"What do you mean?"

"We don't tend to live too long. I mean, if the sunlight wasn't enough, there's holy water, crucifixes, _anything_ silver . . . there's too many damn ways to kill us." Bahorel frowned. "I'll be honest with you, Courf; you're looking at ten years at most."

"Oh." Courfeyrac swallowed hard and glanced down at his untouched tea. He didn't think he had any appetite for it anymore.

"That's more than most get," Bahorel said, squeezing his shoulder. "Most of the new ones don't know what to do about the daylight and don't last more than a few days. That's not happening to you; Jehan and I will make sure of that."

"Jehan is . . . also?"

Bahorel nodded. "The ruffed collars?" He shrugged. "He refused to let this force him into fashion. Mind you, he dressed poorly before it as well--you didn't know him then--but it's led him to a new low."

"Who else?"

"No one else you know. There's a few others we know of in the city--Jehan's poet friends, mostly. Although you'd be surprised, only one of the other catacomb poets is one of us; the others are just your garden variety morbid Romantic."

"So no Grand Coven?" Courfeyrac asked, trying to smile. "No Lord of Darkness with a Thousand-Year Plan or a scheme to rule the world?"

Bahorel shook his head sadly. "None of that. We're just a handful of ostracized creatures with no jobs and no social lives beyond what happens after dark. And the only plan we have is to try to keep each other alive as long as possible."

Courfeyrac searched for the joke to make from it all and came up empty. Instead, he recalled Enjolras in the cafe just last week.

He'd been sitting in front of a window, the sunlight (the sun--he'd never get to say goodbye) turning his golden hair into a glorious halo. It had started out as a conversation with Courfeyrac, but as he'd gone on, Enjolras had gotten more and more excited about the subject, as was his way, and Courfeyrac had lapsed into comfortable silence, content just to listen to him talk.

"They think I'm blind to the consequences of my actions," Enjolras had said. "That I don't know where the path we're on could lead. But I've counted the cost, Courfeyrac--time and time again, I've faced the knowledge that the price of our struggle for liberty could be my very life. 'You'll die young!' People fling it at me as if they could surprise me with it--as if I haven't woken to the thought every morning for years and walked with it through the streets of our city, as if the awareness that my days are numbered wasn't etched into my very bones.

"But _Courfeyrac_ , it'll be worth it--won't it? For the sake of a free France, for a world where women and children eat freely every day and there's honest labor for every honest man, for an end to the darkness and the dawning of a new day. For that new day, I would die young a thousand times over."

Sitting in the darkness of Jehan's cluttered apartment, Courfeyrac felt a chill pass over him. _It looks like even if our cause doesn't take me, I'll get my early death one way or another_ , he said silently--then bit his lip as a new thought struck him. Was there even a place in the cause for him now? Never mind how Enjolras and the others would react when--if--they learned the truth (Could they even know?), how would Courfeyrac participate in a protest, or deliver pamphlets, or attend meetings if the touch of sunlight was death? When their day came and the city rose up in arms, would Courfeyrac have to spend it locked up in his rooms, unable to even peek out through the shutter?

The teacup slipped from his trembling hands, but Bahorel--moving more quickly than he should be able to--caught it just before it hit the ground. "Hey now," he said softly. "Don't fret. You have us." He picked up a bottle-green dressing gown from the back of a settee and draped it over Courfeyrac's shoulders, patting him through the quilted fabric. "Things are going to be all right."

 


End file.
